Got the seat mounts done tonight, although I may add an extra cross brace on the drivers side mount – to be continued…

I’m really pleased with the progress that I have made this week.

Tip for the day: Welding sparks are hot – I can still smell the burning hair.

Got the rose joint for the other end of the steering column today.  No other progress on the steering yet.

Its a lot bigger than I was hoping for, but a bit of cutting, grinding and sanding will have it much lighter in no time 🙂  I’ve also got the two locking nuts for it, and they have already been in the lathe tonight and are now 1/2 the thickness that they used to be (and more importantly half the weight!)

Got an hour in the shed tonight, made some good progress on the seat mounts.

Made up the little spigots, and a connecting bar.  As usual with these things, on little piece of tube on both sides was an hours fabrication.  So both of these are welded and are mounted onto the seat, and I’ve put the seat back into the car.  Where these mount onto the car frame has been decided, and with some luck I’ll be able to get at least one side made if I can get another hour tomorrow night.

I thought that I had better do some more tonight, to explain what I’ve been babbling on about for the last few days 🙂

The large bolts hanging out the top won’t be staying, but they were the only ones I had.  Once I find the right ones, they will be down inside the vertical tubes.

So the supports for the bearing carrier are now done, just need to finish weld them with the Tig, as soon as I get some more gas for it (ohh, and get the right length bolts :)).

Anyway, enough for tonight.

Today I got the bearing carrier for the steering shaft done.  It took much much longer than I had hoped!  To be fair, a lot of the time was making an adapter to mount the 4 jaw chuck into the lathe, as I’m unable to get the 3 jaw chuck off!  This took a while as it had to be exactly centered, or else the chuck would have wobbled around all over the place and nothing that was made inside it would have come out flat.

So, after that, and some cleaning up, 5hrs had gone by!  So didn’t make any where near as much progress as I wanted 😦

The steering shaft now has its bearing and the carrier all assembled and mounted, and its clamped back in the car ready to have the bars made that will link the roll cage to the new bearing carrier.

This pic probably better shows where all this is located.

Considering how long it took to machine the bearing carrier, I think I’m just going to buy a rose joint for the other end of the shaft.  On reflection, I think this will be a good thing anyway, as it will allow adjustment of the upper part of the steering column, without me having to make the lower bearing carrier adjustable (the rose joint allows some angular misalignment).  I had originally thought about using rose joints on both ends, but I never liked how they have to be mounted – the look ugly, and I want to have something that can break off in a large accident.  If I hit the wheel, I’d rather it break and move out of the way (think collapsible steering columns).  I want this car to be stupid fast – but I still want it as safe as it can be for the day that I do crash it.

That bearing carrier started off looking like this – A 30mm thick lump of alloy scrap.

I’m been a bit down on my lack of progress of late, going to try do a couple of nights this week.

Thurs night I started machining the mounts for the steering column.

I used the lathe as a “horizontal mill” to do the edges.  I make a clamp that goes into the lathe tool post, and put the milling bit into the lathe chuck.  It worked well to a degree, the finish was nice etc, but it as there is no vertical adjustment, I had to remove the part, put spacers under it, then go again in order to be able to mill the full thickness – making it very hard to keep each pass parallel.  Can’t wait until I have enough $$$ for a proper mill.

The pics below are after one pass.  You can see the bit sticking out the bottom, that’s the bit that I need machine on a separate pass after spacing the part a bit lower.

Once the rough outline was milled, I started machining out the middle to hold the bearing.  This pic is only part way through the roughing out, so it looks a bit messy in this pic.  Once I finish it tomorrow I’ll post another pic.

Spent a bit of time on the car on Sunday late arvo/night, but don’t have much progress to show for it.  Although I did cut out one circle and welded it to a piece of tube (The steering column as shown below)

Spent time getting the seat, pedals and steering wheel setup in the car, and clamping them all down so I can make the mounts.  I got the bolts for the engine mounts and the bearings for the steering column today, so will be able to get going on the steering column now.

I had to tweak the gearbox mount, after JC and I learnt more about diff pinion angles 🙂  I didn’t have pics of the finished mounts previously, so here they are.

Spent a few hours on the house too – some more cleaning up of junk around the place and some work on the new wall.  The wood paneling (its actually smooth decking) has been wet by the rain in these pics, hence the mottled finish.  Around three hours down, many many hours to go before its done.

In last weekend’s post, I didn’t have any pics of the completed gearbox mounts.  Did a little bit of cleaning up and some more work in the shed last night, so took some pics.

This pic is taken from under the car.

The left picture is from the passenger side, the one on the right is taken from underneath.

After doing a lot of shed cleaning, and outside cleaning, I put the seat and pedals into the car and started lining them all up ready to make the mounts for them.  I think its all planned out now, but its never until you get onto the track that you really know if you got the seating location right.

I’ve decided on the final design for the seat mounts, just need to get a small bit of moly tube in the right size to able to do it.  So i’ll grab that tomorrow, ready for the weekend.

Hopefully I can get the seat mount done, and then get at least some of the pedal box mount done, and super optimistically hopeful that I can even a mock-up the steering shaft and steering wheel, to make sure I’ve make it comfortable before I weld it all up :).  Time, as always, will tell….

Got the engine mounts about 80% complete, and the engine is now hanging in the new frame for the first time.  I just need to mount the pedal box before I can finish the drivers side mount, as its going to be close to the pedals.  I want to have them mounted in order to make sure they don’t hit.  Those couple of tubes and the brackets on the chassis – almost 8hrs of work.  Slow going as it’s fiddly work.

This is the drivers side mount, viewed from the engine bay.

Passenger Side mount, viewed from underneath.